Docheiariou Monastery

Oxford University Library

The Monastery of Dochiario

The Holy Monastery of Dochiari is the first coastal monastery on the southwest side of the Athonian peninsula, built at the end of an uneven slope a short distance from Xenophontos Monastery.

It occupies the tenth place in the hierarchy of the twenty monasteries of Mount Athos.

Establishment and development. According to tradition, the monastery of Dochiari was founded by Saint Euthymios, fellow practitioner and student of Agios Athanasios, who preached in the Lavra having the deaconship of "dochiari", i.e. the person in charge of the food warehouse.

The monastery of Dochiario is witnessed for the first time in 1013 with the signature of the monk Theodoulou "of Dochiario" in two acts of the synod. Theodoulos himself also signs documents from 1015 and 1020. According to a document from 1037, the first monastery, dedicated to Saint Nikolaos, was founded next to the bay of Daphne, whose name he also bore, along with the nickname "Dochiario" . The information in the same document, that the monastery has owned property "since time immemorial", as well as other indications, encourage the search for its original foundation in the last quarter of the 10th century. According to another opinion, its founder and first abbot is considered to be "Ioannis monachos the potter", who signed a document of the Lavra from the beginning of the 11th century. However, due to pirate raids, the monks, between 1037 and 1083, left Dafni and took refuge in a position rather higher than today. From then on, the monastery bore only the name of "Dochiariou".

The first great benefactors of the monastery of Dochiari were the emperors Michael VII Doukas, together with his mother Evdokia (1071–1078), and Nikiforos Botaneiatis (1078–1081). The latter is even mentioned as its founder. Also, in 1089, Alexios I Komnenos, as well as his mother Anna Dalasini, protect the monastery's possessions and annuities.

In the current location of the monastery, as can be seen from documents before and after 1100, a primary role in its reconstruction was played by the former patrician and friend of the emperor Nikephoros, abbot Neophytos. As he mentions in his will, "I built a palace and planted a vineyard and built ships... and the temple of the Chief General... Michael... I raised, the beauty of which I complained a lot...".

Its heyday in the first three centuries of its life can also be inferred from the series it holds in the Typical of Mount Athos.

The period of prosperity was followed by a period of hardship and suffering. Due to its coastal location, it was exposed to pirate raids, especially from the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th.

During the 14th century efforts are being made to fix it. Her assistants during this period are the king of Serbia Stefanos Dusan (1349) and the emperor John V Paleologos (1355). At the same time, the monastery of Calligrafou, one of the monasteries of Mount Athos not preserved today, was attached to it.

However, the blows from the pirate raids continued in the two following centuries (15–16 centuries). Also with the Turkish occupation and other national disasters it fell into decline until the beginning of the 16th century. E.g., in 1567/68 a firman was issued by Sultan Selim II the Drunkard (1566–1574), by which the property of the monastery was confiscated.

From the beginning of the 16th c. various small building repairs begin, which after the middle of the century become more systematic. The pioneer is considered to be the Andrianoupolis priest George, who dedicated himself to the service of the monastery after his healing in the sanctification of the Archangels. George convinced the ruler of Moldavia John Alexander IV Lepousneanu and his wife Roxandra to help in the reconstruction project. The Metropolitan of Moldavia Theofanis supervised its reconstruction work and later abandoned and died in it. According to a related inscription, the completion of the Catholic Church, which took place in 1568, is due to Lepousneanos. Its frescoes, among the best examples of the Cretan School, constitute the most complete pictorial composition of a catholicon on Mount Athos, and are attributed to the painter Tjortzis (1568). The built-in bench on the west side of the monastery was built by the archbishop of Achridas Prochoros and partially frescoed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

During the 17th century the south side was built (1602), the chapel of Saint Demetrius (1614), the 4 upper floors of the tower (1617), the chapel of the Holy 40 Martyrs (1636), the painting of the Trapeza was carried out (1676 & 1700), etc.

In 1660 the monastery was declared stauropigiac, with the seal of the patriarch Parthenios IV.

In the next century, building work continues. Then the NW side was built (1723), the bell tower (1736, the flask was founded (1765), the iconostasis (1783), etc.

During the Greek revolution of 1821, the monastery of Dochiari lost almost all of its relics, as well as a lot of living material. Only the record where they were recorded is saved. The projects carried out during this period are minimal.

The monks in 1808 numbered 79, of which 46 lived within the walls of the monastery.

The monastery of Dochiari was converted into a convent in 1980 with the Seal of the Patriarch of Constantinople Demetrius I. Today its abbot is Archimandrite Grigorios.

Museum-Sacristy

The Vault of the Holy Monastery of Dochiari was moved to its tower in 1930. It includes various precious relics, such as a part of the Holy Wood, reliquaries of many saints, sacred Vessels, Vestments and Matres, other gold-embroidered fabrics, wooden and wire Crosses, as well as Holy Chalices, Gospels, Incense and Candles.

Among the relics of the Archdiocese there is also an offering disc with a diameter of 38 cm., made of an undiagnosed copper alloy, which bears a relief representation of the protoplasts on either side of the tree of life. The type of performance is noticeably different from the established type found in the vast majority of record deals, and is quite rare. It probably comes from a German metalworking workshop of the early 16th century.

Icons

In the Icon Vault of the Monastery, which includes portable icons, Byzantine, post-Byzantine and newer, those that cannot be kept for liturgical use in the Catholic Church and its Chapels, due to their number or the need for maintenance, are kept.

We also point out the existence of a marble chest from the iconostasis of the catholicon, from the 11th century, where the mythical flight of Alexander the Great is represented on a diphro drawn by two griffins. Today this shield is built into the outer side of the temple.

Library

In the 18th–19th c. the library of the monastery of Dochiari was housed in a small space above the hospital. After the fire of 1891 in the Simonos Petras monastery and the destruction of its library, for fire safety reasons, as happened in many other monasteries, the library was moved to the tower, a construction of the beginning of the 16th century, which rises in the middle of the eastern wing . The library material occupies the second, third and fourth floors, while part of the publications are also kept in the west wing.

In 2015, the Center for the Safeguarding of Holy Heritage prepared a site study for a new Vault and Library.

Library-Archive

From a document of the monastery (1344) we are informed that the monastery lost its archive, due to "the Latin invasion", while after 1420, forred to the Xenophon monastery.

From time to time the old documents of the monastery were repeatedly classified and many foreign languages were translated. However, a systematic effort was made around 1920, led by Christoforos Ktenas. His testimony about the state of the archive is typical: "The old documents of the monastery, except during its desolation, had been lost, and it is unknown to us where and when they were found, since the ancient superiors of this monastery were buried in sacks of pannins, it is impossible to so that their enemies may enter, or teconis and the sylph and the sis." Christoforos Ktenas numbered the most official documents of the archive and copied them into code. He divided them into four categories: a) constitutive, b) imperial chrysobulls, b) krisimographs of the enumerators of the various subjects of the Byzantine State, d) patriarchal seals and other ecclesiastical documents. From the newer documents, he numbered what he considered important, while the rest he placed in bundles in chronological order and origin. He did not classify the Turkish and Romanian documents.

The last systematic classification of the material of the Byzantine and early post-Byzantine period (1037–1695), was carried out by a team organized by the Center for Byzantine Research of the EIE after repeated visits during the 1960s. This work was published in 1985 (see Bibliography)

Today, the monastery archive holds 60 Byzantine documents from the 11th to the 15th century, about 100 documents from the 16th and 17th centuries and a very large number of unclassified documents from the 18th and 19th centuries. 900 Romanian and 1200 Turkish documents are still kept.

Library-Manuscript Codices

In the years of Robert Curzon (1837) the library of the monastery of Dochiariou had 2,500 codices, of which 150 were parchments. Curzon, leaving the monastery, took with him three loose parchment leaves from Evangelistario, in capital letters, which dates them back to the 9th century.

Today, the library of the monastery includes 646 manuscripts, of which 62 are parchments. Several dozen of the manuscripts are uncatalogued, coming from Cells of the monastery or from old burials, among them parchment fragments with capital letters (8th-9th century). Furthermore, the library has a large number of musical codices, amounting to 143. Among the manuscripts there are also 9 Slavic ones. Also, among the codices are more than twenty codices, which were created by renowned codographers of the monastery of Dochiari.

Among the manuscript codices, an illustrated Calendar of the 12th century stands out. (Cod. 5), with edited writing and gold-red headings. It is decorated with 20 representations of saints, of which one has been cut away. Also, a parchment Gospel of the 13th century. (Code 7) and its paper inventory of the year 1361 (Code 76). Also, in the library of the monastery is the oldest of the extant canonical manuscripts with works by Lucian.

Of the 395 codices of the Monastery cataloged by Spyridon Lambros, only eight contain works of classical and late antiquity. Among them are the Myths of Aesop, the Golden Epics of Pythagoras, the Epistles of Synesius and Phalaris, some speeches of Isocrates, etc. Worthy of reference is codex 268 of the 14th century, in which Selections of works by Plutarch and Lucian with Speeches and Letters of Basil the Great are compiled.

Library-Print Books

Christoforos Ktenas, around 1930, has 1,273 volumes of publications with varied content. Of these, 48, covering the period 1499–1600, contain classical and ecclesiastical works.

The Library currently contains approximately 5,000 printed books, including several archetypes and antiquities. A series of editions of the door-to-door correspondence of classical authors dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries stands out: Homer, Pindar, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles, Xenophon, Lucian, Demosthenes.

Thomas Papadopoulos in the Libraries of Mount Athos (p. 4), the first Greek edition he has located in the monastery of Dochiari dates back to 1498. It is Aristophanes' Nine Comedies, printed in Venice apud Aldum. The most chronologically next publication in the collection is Etymologikon Mega per alphabet, printed in 1499 in Venice, edited by Zacharias Kalliergis.

Source https://www.aboutlibraries.gr/libraries/handle/20.500.12777/lib_113
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Videos on Docheiariou Monastery

The monastery of Docheiariou.

The late abbot of Docheiariou. Grigorios.

The late abbot of Docheiariou.Grigorios castigating the current athonite departure from monastic tradition of the Holy Mountain. A priceless video!
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